Victoria Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday 11th November)

Best Days: Sunday exposed beaches

Recap

A hot, fun and full day of waves across the exposed beaches yesterday with easing surf from 3ft+ early, back to 2-3ft into the afternoon and a small 2ft on the Surf Coast.

Today, there's still small, 2ft+ sets hanging in across the exposed beaches with stormy weather and tiny surf to the west. We'll see winds strengthen from the N/NE-N through the day as the surf continues to slowly ease.

This week and next (Nov 12 - 20)

The current stormy weather is emanating from a strong mid-latitude low that's currently moving in from the west, through the Bight, but as talked about the last couple of updates, the swell generating fetch around its northern flank is sitting too far north and out of our swell window.

The low will weaken and track south-east into our swell window tomorrow and as it does so winds will shift NW tomorrow morning and then more W/NW later in the day if not SW across some locations.

There'll be no decent swell in locations that'll be clean so tomorrow will be a lay day.

As the low moves into our swell window a very weak fetch of W/SW winds will be generated, weakening further as the low continues east.

I can't see any decent size at all being generated from this source, and locations that'll be clean under a morning W/NW breeze will be small to tiny. Therefore both tomorrow and Friday look to be lay days, with Friday morning the pick if you're absolutely desperate and keen for a 1ft to occasionally 2ft wave on the Surf Coast.

Saturday unfortunately doesn't hold any improvement to the surf outlook with small to tiny levels of W'ly swell unlikely to top 1ft on the Surf Coast along with a morning W/NW wind, giving into S/SW sea breezes.

Sunday will be cleaner on the exposed beaches as winds shift to the NE and strengthen ahead of a small surface trough. This will be at the same time an inconsistent, long-period W/SW groundswell starts to build, generated in our far swell window today.

A strong mid-latitude low has formed north-east of Heard Island and it's generating a great fetch of severe-gale W/SW winds in our far western swell window. The low is forecast to break down this afternoon and evening south-west of WA, with the long-period energy arriving overnight Saturday and building slowly Sunday.

Size wise the peak is expected Sunday evening/early Monday but we should see the Mornington Peninsula building slowly from an infrequent 2ft in the morning Sunday to 3-5ft into the late afternoon, with the Surf Coast only building to a slow 2ft late in the day max.

Monday morning should see infrequent easing sets from 2ft+ on the Surf Coast swell magnets and 4-5ft on the Mornington Peninsula, though winds will swing to the W in the wake of the trough moving in Sunday.

Longer term there's still nothing significant for next week as an upper level blocking pattern steers frontal systems away from our main, close-range swell windows. Instead we'll see small, inconsistent westerly pulses, but more on this Friday.